Good news! Our subscription to Aesthetica arts magazine has been renewed.

The magazine has lots of great visual culture including photography, fashion, architecture and fine art. It comes out 4 times a year (‘quarterly’ in librarian-speak). Find it in the LRC on the journals stand.

You can also delve into the online archives any time through our library account. Browse the pictures to your heart’s content and see the world through artists’ eyes (always an interesting perspective!). Find the username and password on VLE under LRC –> eresources (then the eresources book).

Welcome to the Introduction to Science students who join us today for 5 weeks.

We will meet with your group this week to show you the many resources held by the Learning Resources Centre (LRC), how to use the library catalogue and give you membership cards.

Next week, we will demonstrate how you can benefit from the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) where you can access a number of eresources and ebooks to help with your studies.

If you would like to recommend useful apps or websites we are always happy to hear from you and if you require help accessing extra materials for chemistry, physics or biology, pop into the LRC and talk to one of the team.

Follow Your Vote Matters on Twitter @YourVote_UK for daily facts on voting running up to and including election day Thursday 8 June. If you are still undecided about the candidates and their political parties take a look at Easy News‘s special General Election Manifesto Special Edition for June. You can download it from their website. We have a copy on display in the Learning Resources Centre.

You may be wondering why we’ve not added ones for the Conservative Party and the UK Independence Party (UKIP). This is because none are yet available. Mencap is urging these parties to produce them on their website page General Election 2017 Easy Read Manifestos. They’ve also brought all the easy read ones together on the same page. We’ll update the post when ones become available.

Such phrases that are supposed to encourage hard work sometimes have the opposite effect. For example, being told to ‘put your nose to the grindstone’ could put off anyone for whom self-discipline is elusive, from ever studying again! In the New Scientist this week (Issue 3126, pp. 27-30) is a feature article called ‘Daydream believer’. It looks at what we can do to increase our focus at a long task such as revision, looking particularly at letting the mind wander around a topic.

Several studies suggest that letting yourself daydream intentionally about a topic which you are learning is a more effective strategy than forcing yourself to concentrate over a lengthy period.

So when you’re studying, don’t put your nose to the grindstone – tend to the thought garden. Consider the makeup of the flowers (the interesting parts), appreciate the insects and worms (the causes and unseen elements), imagine the sunshine and rain that will fall in the future (the bigger context and processes). Build up an intentional daydream about your topic of study. Mull things over not only when you’re at a desk or in the library, but when you’re in the shower, walking up from the station or making a cup of tea.

If this doesn’t appeal to you, there are other tried and tested memory techniques that are based on visualisation of the topic matters for instance in rooms of a “house”. Read about that tool in The Memory Book by Buzan and Harrison.

The General Election is on 8 June. Our students on the Step Up to Functional Skills and Interviews course have been discussing this in class. As a result we’ve come up with some handy sources to help you vote in the election.

We also get the weekly newspaper First News which makes the news easier to understand. They are running a reader mock general election. Take a look at their General Election page for an easy read on what the different parties stand for.

Register to vote on the UK Government website. You will need your national insurance number. You can also register by post with this form if you live in England/Wales. You need to register by 1159am on Monday 22 May. You can download this form to register for a vote by post if you are away from home on election day. Your Vote Matters website has a handy search engine so you can find your local authority to register to vote in person or send them a form to get a postal vote.

Last week we were delighted to find out that The Real Book Club had won a competition hosted by The Reading Agency. Studio Canal kindly sent us a set of ‘The Sense of an Ending’ and organised tickets for us to see the film version at the cinema. It’s a demanding read, but hopefully having watched the film it will help us visualise the characters and settings. We also have another film by the same director available to borrow in the LRC, called ‘The Lunchbox’. The Curzon Victoria cinema was a treat to visit with lush seats, screens and kind staff. Thank you!